It's 2017. Why The Hell Are Men Still Wearing Jeans With Blazers?

The bad-blazer-with-dad-jean style epidemic is sweeping the country. You might have seen one of its victims lurking around the wine box at parent's evening, or slumped opposite you at a midweek dinner party. Victims can also regularly be found swaggering around the office on dress down Friday, or in the pub, draining a few too many shandies on a Thursday afternoon. Identifiable by his outfit of soggy-bottomed bootcut jeans, droop-shouldered four-button suit blazer and sad business shirt that's been in wardrobe circulation for the past ten years, victims of the bad-blazer-with-dad-jean epidemic are everywhere. Even in Hollywood.

It took hold at some point back in the early noughties. Daniel Craig was an early proponent - he wore a pair of boot cut stonewash jeans with some Converse and an ill-fitting brown blazer to the Road to Perdition premier in 2002. Matthew McConaughey was another serial offender. He notably wore a pair of bootcut jeans with a blazer and Stetson to an awards ceremony in 2011 (just one year before the McConnaisance). More recently Javier Bardem, y'know, the guy that's dating the most beautiful woman in the world, was spotted at the Venice Film Festival desecrating an immaculately cut black suit jacket with a pair of raw denim jeans, hoiked up painfully high.

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It's an easy mistake to make, I guess. A pair of jeans is the most unassuming, adaptable garment in your wardrobe. Jeans go with everything, and no matter how you wear them, they'll make you look cool. Right?

A pair of selvedge jeans worn with a Sea Island cotton T-shirt? Sure. Some tapered stonewash Jeans with a loopback jersey sweatshirt? Absolutely. A pair of dad jeans worn with the jacket of that suit jacket you can't fit into the trousers of anymore? No way, Javier.

It's all in the cloth. Denim, a rough and ready material historically used to make the overalls of miners, factory workers and prospectors has no place in the same outfit as suiting fabric, the uniform of white collar workers the world over. It's the equivalent of wearing a brushed cotton plaid shirt with a pair of tuxedo trousers: it'll keep you warm and, on a basic level, protect you from exposure, but it'll also make you look thoughtless and lazy.

It's a look which lacks commitment, too. Either you're wearing a suit - which obviously can and should look fantastic - or you're wearing jeans, which can also look great in their own way (see: Marlon Brando in Easy Rider, James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Elvis Presley in Jail House Rock). Worn together, however, these disparate elements - a suit jacket and jeans - will make you look like a particularly sad edition of a children's 'dress-up dolly' flip book and/or a presenter of The Grand Tour.

There are, of course, exceptions. A pair of white denim jeans worn with a camel hair or caramel cashmere blazer can look amazing. A pair of slim-cut raw denim jeans teamed with a chunky double-breasted naval blazer (gold buttons essential) can also look great – there's something about the fact that this style of jacket originated in the military that makes its pairing with jeans seem appropriate. Even a pair of skinny black jeans worn with a cropped black tuxedo jacket can look good on the right septuagenarian rockstar.

In short, denim is functional and so too should the clothes you pair with it be. Lumberjack plaid shirts, dense naval wool blazers, military-grade rip stock windbreakers, gym-ready jersey sweaters, even heavy-weight Tuxedo jackets can look great with denim. But when it comes to the jacket of your grey work suit and that pair of 501s which've been knocking around at the back of the wardrobe for the past decade, it's probably worth giving it a miss. Because if Bond, Coop and Mr. Penelope Cruz can't make it work, chances are you can't either.

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